Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy blasts education reforms

Tuesday 1 October 2013 12:45 BST

Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy has joined leading academics and children’s authors in condemning the Government’s education policies as being harmful to children.

Nearly 200 people, also including Children’s Laureate Malorie Blackman, said they are “gravely concerned” by new policies in state education and called for the reforms, affecting the national curriculum and exams, to be halted.

Their letter, published in The Times today, and also signed by writers Melvin Burgess and Michael Rosen, comes as Education Secretary Michael Gove prepared to address the Tory conference. They wrote: “Competition between children through incessant testing and labelling results in a public sense of failure for the vast majority. The drive towards ever-higher attainment in national tests leads inevitably to teaching to the test, which narrows the range of learning experiences. Harmful stress is put on young people, their parents and their teachers.

“These damaging developments must stop. If they go ahead there will be devastating consequences for children’s mental health, for future opportunities and, most importantly, for the quality of childhood itself.”